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When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.
Stephan: My wife and I live in Washington State and we have been filling out our ballots, which are reliably mailed to us, and then taking them to one of the many ballot boxes scattered around the county. Simple, straightforward, a non-issue. But I know that is not true in much of America and I am very concerned about the explicit and open attempt by Trump and his orcs to rig the election to assure his re-election. I am astonished at how blatant it all is, and how wimpy the Congressional response has been. The Democrats are disappointing, and the Republicans are just... well, just orcs.
To me it cannot be over-emphasized how important it is that everyone who can vote does vote, and this article lays out how to do that and get around Trump and his orcs.
Washington State ballot box
A lot of people have concerns about mail-in voting (is the Postal Service being sabotaged? Will their vote be counted?), and also about the state of American democracy in general.Voting by mail is actually very secure, despite what the President says. However, if people don’t trust that their votes will be counted, that’s a full-blown crisis of democracy. With millions of Americans turning to mail-in voting, many for the first time, because of the coronavirus pandemic, that means doubts about the ability of the USPS to deliver mail equal doubts about the election.Related: What you need to know about voting by mailVote early! On Friday, we learned USPS has notified states that some mail-in ballots are at risk of not being counted.From CNN’s Ellie Kaufman:Multiple states received communications from the USPS general counsel outlining standard mail delivery times and prices leading up to the November election and warning secretaries of state that election laws established by the states would not necessarily guarantee that mail-in ballots […]
Nathaniel Rakich and Julia Wolfe, - Fivethirtyeight
Stephan: Here is more voting information, this time state by state. I am hoping that this and the preceding article will give you everything you need to be able to safely vote, and have your vote counted. Whatever your political views, every American should be in support of voting, and having every vote counted. It is the foundation of our democracy.
Click on your state in the map to see a lot of the information you need in order to cast a ballot this fall — by whatever method you choose. This page will be updated on a regular basis with the latest developments. While we’ve made every effort to ensure the accuracy of this information, always double-check with your local election official before acting upon it. Thanks to the pandemic, election laws are constantly changing, and certain voters — like those living overseas or in the armed forces — may be subject to special rules. If you think something is wrong or needs to be updated, please shoot us an email.
Alabama
Registration
Register to vote by Oct. 19. You can register online here.
Voting early
No true early voting, but you can vote absentee in person.
In-person voting
So far, no plans to close polling places have been announced. Remember to bring a photo ID to the polls.
Stephan: When most nonrural Americans think about bankruptcies they think about shops they go to, or restaurants where they eat. But there is another set of bankruptcies that are going to have a very personal impact on how they live at home -- farm bankruptcies. The people who grow our food between Trump's ghastly tariff food wars and the Covid pandemic are going bankrupt at a rate not seen in decades. Even when they are not going bankrupt, because of Trump's racist immigration policies, they are having a hard time hiring the men and women they need to work in their fields.
My wife grows most of the non-protein foods we eat, but when I go into the market for something I notice that lettuce is $3-4 a head, with Romaine being most expensive. It will probably be $5-6 a head this winter. If you make $15 to $25 an hour, how do you spend $30-40 a week on lettuce so your kids can eat salads? And if they don't how do they stay healthy?
Bankrupt farmMore farmers are declaring bankruptcy despite record levels of federal aid, reported The Wall Street Journal (Aug. 6).
About 580 farmers filed for Chapter 12 bankruptcy protection in the 12-month period ended June 30, according to federal data—8% more than a year earlier.
In 2019, farm bankruptcies were up, reported FB.org. Chapter 12 family farm bankruptcies increased by nearly 20% from the previous year, according to data from U.S. courts. Looking at figures from over the past decade, the 20% increase follows only 2010, the year following the Great Recession when Chapter 12 bankruptcies rose 33%.
With slightly more than 2 million farms in the U.S., the 2019 bankruptcy data reveals a bankruptcy rate of approximately 2.95 bankruptcies per 10,000 farms, just below the rate of 2.99 filings per 10,000 farms in 2011.
However, bankruptcies slowed slightly in the first half of 2020, partly due to an infusion of federal aid and hurdles to filing during the pandemic, according to agricultural economists and attorneys. In April, The Wall Street Journal reported that President Trump announced a […]
Stephan: Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama are part of a secret satanic international pedophile ring trading in child sex slaves. How sick do you have to be to take something like that seriously? I read a lot of rightwing websites because I think it is important to know what Trump world is thinking. It is a chore because it is so crazy it doesn't even work as satire and the fact that millions of people believe it I find astonishing. It isn't just that it is fact-free. It is the racism, the nastiness, the ugliness, and the very weird sexuality of these people. It is a kind of religious political S&M. Their obsessions tell more about them, than the people they talk about. Here is a little background on that world and what is going on in it.
Trump supporters, notice they are all White. Credit: Shutterstock
Remember the “Left Behind” series, about how the Rapture would whisk away all devout right-wing Christians before Jesus Christ unleashed the apocalypse on the unbelievers? Purity rings? Jesus Camp? Breathless stories about “girls gone mild,” giving up sex and tank tops for the Lord? A federal health official who believed that women who had premarital sex couldn’t feel love? Jerry Falwell Sr. and Pat Robertson blaming 9/11 on the “pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way”?There can be no doubt that the heyday of Christian fundamentalism in America was the George W. Bush administration. Conservatives craved reassurance that they were defenders of “morality”, despite supporting an indefensible invasion of Iraq that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands. These claims to moral superiority over liberals mainly came in the form of […]
Stephan: By any measure I can find, with the exception of the rich, who are getting much richer, America is coming apart. In three and a half years Trump, his orcs, and the Congressional Republicans and Red-state governors have taken a country that was thriving, when Trump came into office, into a nose dive that has left us in a medical crisis and an economic christofascist mire. Every social outcome measurement reports pain, suffering, fear, and anger. Pew Research Center lays it all out, with real facts, not conspiracy theories and fantasies.
With less than five months until the 2020 elections, Americans are deeply unhappy with the state of the nation. As the United States simultaneously struggles with a pandemic, an economic recession and protests about police violence and racial justice, the share of the public saying they are satisfied with the way things are going in the country has plummeted from 31% in April, during the early weeks of the coronavirus outbreak, to just 12% today.
Anger and fear are widespread. Majorities of Democrats and Republicans say they feel both sentiments when thinking about the country, though these feelings are more prevalent among Democrats. And just 17% of Americans – including 25% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents and 10% of Democrats and Democratic leaners – say they feel proud when thinking about the state of the country.
However, nearly half of adults (46%) say they feel hopeful about the state of the country, although a 53% majority says they are not hopeful.
In the presidential contest, Donald Trump faces a 10 percentage point deficit in his race against Joe Biden: 54% of registered voters […]
Stephan: It is a measure of what the United States has become that, as this report describes, 25% of young adults have considered killing themselves rather than going forward with their lives. Think about that for a moment, and consider what that is telling you about America today.
If you or someone you know is feeling suicidal call or suggest they call The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-8255.
Credit: Adobe Stock
“Symptoms of anxiety disorder and depressive disorder increased considerably in the United States during April–June of 2020, compared with the same period in 2019,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report released Friday. Just over 40 percent of respondents in a June 24-30 survey reported at least one adverse mental or behavioral health condition, ranging from anxiety disorder to increased substance use to cope with the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic.
And 10.7 percent of respondents reported having seriously considered suicide over the previous 30 days because of the pandemic. That’s a high number, but it was especially prevalent among certain groups.
For example, 25.5 percent of young adults age 18 to 24 said they had considered suicide in June, versus 16 percent of respondents age 25-44 and 3.8 percent of those 45 to 64. Other groups with high rates of suicidal ideation included essential workers (21.7 percent), people with less than a high school diploma (30 percent), Black (15.1 percent) and Hispanic (18.6 percent) respondents — 7.9 percent of […]
Stephan: How ironic it is that Trump who brought shame to America by his nasty immigration policies to keep Brown and Black people out, through his incompetence with the pandemic, has ended up making it almost impossible for Americans to be welcomed anywhere.
The Atlantic/Getty
Becoming a United States citizen was meaningful to me for a great number of reasons. German by birth, I had come to feel at home in America, and to love it. For all the deep injustices that shape this country, I remained convinced that the United States was more likely than just about any other place in the world to build a thriving, diverse democracy. And when I wrote about the danger that right-wing populists like Donald Trump pose to the American republic, I cherished being able to speak about his assault on our, as opposed to your, values and institutions.
Alongside all these serious reasons, I also had a very practical one: the power of the U.S. passport. It granted access to just about everywhere, and escape from just about anywhere. Which country—Germany or the United States—would be more likely to rescue me if I got stuck in some foreign country in the middle of a perilous political crisis? Would the last plane to evacuate foreigners from Chad or Chile or Canada before that country devolved into civil war be […]
Stephan: Here is Sunday's Republican Scum Report. It's a classic image. Alex Jones, standing in a park without a mask shouting through a bull horn at some hikers and park workers who must have wondered who is that fat old loon shouting at us?
Alex Jones, ranting loon in a park
Austin-based conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was filmed screaming without a mask for several minutes through a small bullhorn earlier this week at a small group of largely unresponsive hikers and young park workers seated in camp chairs at one of the new check-point entrances to the city’s Barton Creek greenbelt, accusing the “cult member kooks” of participating in an “illegal power grab of the people’s greenbelt.”
“My wife came here this morning, when you cult member kooks showed up here. And you asked her, ‘Where’s her reservation?’” Jones, founder and host of the conspiracy theory website InfoWars, was recorded shouting in an InfoWars video that first went viral Monday.
“Her reservation is that we live in a free country,” he added. “We live in America.”
The city opened the greenbelt Saturday for the first time since the July 4 weekend, implementing a reservation system to limit attendance amid the coronavirus pandemic. Jones, who has peddled conspiracy theories for years, alleged the new system was a profit scheme.
“I want this removed tonight,” he screamed, pointing at the makeshift wooden registration […]
